Penetration Testing Services

Fidus Information Security are a TIGER scheme and CHECK approved UK Penetration Testing consultancy with our specialists holding some of the most recognised certifications in the industry, including CREST certifications.

Red Teaming

We evaluate your entire business in the way an advisory would and gain access using the same techniques. A mixture of research, leveraged weaknesses and stealth allow us to aim for ‘unrealistic’ goals set by you.

Infrastructure Security

Our experienced team of testers use their expertise to assess both internal and external corporate infrastructure, highlighting any potential issues and working with you towards remediation.

Application Security

We evaluate both internal and external applications to ensure a strong security posture has been established.

IT Health Check (ITHC)

Our CREST and TIGER certified consultants will work with you to meet all of the compliance requirements of PSN Code of Conncetion (CoCo) to ensure you have a PSN compliant IT Health Check.

PCI DSS Testing

We perform scanning on your behalf to ensure you remain PCI DSS compliant and work with you to remediate any troublesome findings.

Physical Security

We leverage our experience in conducting Physical Security assessments in order to gain access to your offices and achieve a set of predefined goals.

PSN Assessments

Our experienced team performs PSN assessments on your behalf to ensure a strong security posture has been established.

Industrial Systems

We use our extensive knowledge to help you establish a strong sense of security surrounding your SCADA and ICS systems.

Stolen Device Assessments

Have you ever considered the affect if a company device was stolen? We perform an assessment to better inform you of the risk to your business if a device is lost or stolen.

Device Build Reviews

We assess the quality of your device builds against security best practices.

What is Penetration Testing (Pen Testing)?

Penetration Testing is the systematic process of identifying and exploiting vulnerabilities in a range of business assets, including; applications, networks, mobile devices and wireless networks. These engagements aim to evaluate these vulnerabilities and ascertain whether exploitation is possible and how much of an impact there is to the Confidentiality, Integrity and Availability (CIA) of your data.

Pen Tests are performed using a mixture of automated and manual technologies to identify and exploit issues which could allow for compromise of servers, web applications, network devices, wireless networks and other potentially exposed areas of the your business.

Fidus consultants mimic the techniques currently used by adversaries to ensure an accurate representation of your security posture has been established. However, we do this without causing damage and with minimal disruption to day-to-day business.

The most common types of tests that we perform at Fidus are Network and Application based. This is an ideal starting point of any business who have never conducted a security assessment before.

Fidus consultants also have the capability of launching extremely realistic phishing campaigns to evaluate employee susceptibility to similar attacks along with years of experience in conducting highly sophisticated advanced persistent threat (APT) style red team engagements.

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Why Fidus?

When selecting a Penetration Testing provider it’s important to ensure you choose the right one. Fidus Information Security are an NCSC CHECK Green Light and TIGER scheme approved consultancy with our consultants holding some of the most recognised certifications in the industry, such as; CREST Certified Tester and Senior Security Tester. Along with this, Fidus are also a Cyber Essentials verified company. All of our assessments implement UK industry approved methodologies (OWASP, PETS, NIST) along with our internal methodologies.

Remedial Support

We provide support when actioning any remedial recommendations as detailed in our reports.

Certified Security Consultants

Our team consists of CREST and TIGER scheme approved individuals who hold the following certifications; OSCP, CCT, SST and CISSP.

Easy to Understand Reports

Our reports are aimed at all audiences. We have portions of our reports aimed at executives and portions of our reports aimed at the technical team.

Fixed Price Proposals

Our proposals are broken down into a costing table detailing each phase and the associated pricing.

The image below outlines what makes Fidus different from our competitors.

What Software Do You Use?

Penetration Testing ‘tools’ are used as part of engagements to help assess, identify and exploit commonly found vulnerabilities. There are numerous different kinds of tools used within every engagement, each with a different use and varying popularity – like most things, people have a preference!

Whilst these tools are effective at finding what they’re able to, it’s important to ensure your provider does not simply run automated tools and issue a report. Many vulnerabilities cannot be identified simply by running an automated tool without some form of manual verification and, in some cases, manual exploitation too. Our consultants at Fidus focus on manual testing where possible and whilst some of these tools are used to aid assessments, they will never be the focal point of the engagement.

What is the Goal of a Penetration Test?

The end goal of a Pen Test varies from client to client and has many underlying factors, such as; complexity of application and/or network, whether there have been previous tests, what kind of data the application/network holds and the size of the organisation.

The most frequent goal we are given by clients is “Can you obtain our customer information?”. However, it is also important to not overlook other issues which could lead to things such as loss of business reputation if the customer facing website is compromised.

Do I Pass/Fail?

Penetration Testing should NOT become a Pass/Fail assessment for your organisation It should be seen as an exercise to evaluate your current security posture with the aim to make as many improvements as possible.

At Fidus, we ensure the client is able to extract as much value from the assessment as possible. As such, our reports contain sections for both the executive team which is aimed at the risks to the business and a technical section for the development and IT teams. We provide enough information for the C-Level staff members to fully understand the report and enough information for the technical team to be able to locate, reproduce and fix all issues discovered.

What is the Cost?

The cost of Penetration Testing is a widely talked about subject in the industry. Using publicly available data on G-Cloud (Gov.uk digital marketplace), we can browse through different listings and get a feel for the average pricing. It is worth noting that G-Cloud is used for the procurement of Public Sector work.

It appears the average price for Pen Testing on G-Cloud is around the £900-1300/day mark.

At Fidus, we aimed to break down the price barrier and provide affordable security services to everyone which is why our day rates are between £550 – 700/day.

What are the stages of a Pen Test?

Initiation / Scoping – Ensuring the delivery of work is exactly as you require and the correct amount of time is allocated to your engagement.

Pre-Assessment – Confirmation that your environment is accessible and ready for testing and all requirements have been completed.

Assessment – Conducting the engagement as per the Scope of Work.

Post-Assessment – Collection of all results and ensuring the tested environment has been tidied up where possible.

Reporting – Compilation of results for final deliverable.

Remediation Discussion and Support – Discussion and explanation of all issues where required and further support for implementing changes as recommended within the deliverable.

How long does an assessment take?

The time it takes to conduct each assessment is dependent on the scope of the engagement. There are multiple factors which can impact the length of the engagement, such as; network size, complexity of applications, size of organisation and whether the assessment is internal or external.

What are the Benefits?

The main benefit of is the proactive approach to finding serious vulnerabilities before attackers do. These vulnerabilities can lead to numerous scenarios such as; reputational damage, loss of user data and financial fines.

Compliance

Penetration Testing is also a key factor to becoming compliant in multiple standards, such as Cyber Essentials Plus, PCI DSS and ISO 27001.

Evaluate Current Security Controls

A pen test allows you to evaluate current security controls which are in place. These could be Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS), Intrusion Protection Systems (IPS), Firewalls and Web Application Firewalls (WAF). We commonly see mis-configuration of these devices, sometimes rendering them ineffective at their main job, keeping your data safe.

Avoid The Cost of Network Downtime

Have you ever worked out how much it would cost your business if you had even a day downtime because of a cyber attack? This is not simply the loss of a day wages for all employees, it may also include; legal fees, incident response, customer protection and damage control activities.

A security assessment also allows you to establish the level of exposure if a specific area of your company gets breached, such as the main user web application, and ascertain how sensitive the data held within is. Currently, sensitive breaches must be reported to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) with fines sometimes reaching 6 figures. However, with the upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) law, these fines are set to multiply and only give organisations 72 hours to discover and report a breach. The easiest way to avoid a breach is to proactively defend against one.

How often should we conduct a Penetration Test?

Penetration Testing should be performed on a regular basis to ensure newly discovered threats and previously recommended implementations are evaluated. In addition to this, penetration testing should occur when there’s a big change to network infrastructure, a new web application is deployed, during/before mergers and Phishing assessments should take place upon expansion of your team.

What kind of test do I require?

The kind of assessment you require has many underlying factors. Some questions such as “We’re about to deploy a new web application, what kind of testing do you recommend?” are much easier to answer than “We’ve never had a Penetration Test before, what do you recommend?”.

For the latter question, there are a series of questions which need to be answered first. Such as; What are your key assets? What would cripple your business if stolen? (Signing keys, source code, customer data etc), How many employees do you have? What is your budget?

It is important to have all of the information to be able to evaluate what would have the best return on investment for your Penetration Test.

If you would like to talk through the different kind of paths you could take, please get in touch.